Shropshire Magazine

Jean Bews receives her certificate from Geoff Swinn, chairman of the judging panel.

A teacher at St Leonard’s School in Bridgnorth, Jean Bews is spreading the word . . . and the word is French. Ben Bentley reports

Bonjour Nicholas. “Bonjour Madame Bews.” Bonjour Grace. “Bonjour Madame Bews.” You might be forgiven for thinking you had woken up in another country.

It’s 8.50am sharp and Mrs Bews’ pupils are sitting bright eyed and bushy tailed ready for the register. In French.

Mind Your Language it ain’t, though. This is St Leonard’s School in Bridgnorth, where children as young as four are minding not their ‘P’s and ‘Q’s but their ‘Oui’s and ‘Tu’s.

After all, Bridgnorth, being twinned with the cross-Channel town of Thiers, might already be described as Little France, and Mrs Bews – Jean in real life – is spearheading a drive to put the language on the tips of children’s tongues at an early age.

“The thinking is, the earlier the better – from the age of four onwards,” she says during a break from proceedings with her year-3 class. “We try to bring it into other parts of the curriculum so, for example, when we are doing maths or geography and you say ‘west’ on the compass we say ‘l’ouest’.”

Ah, mais oui. All around Jean’s brightly decorated classroom hang montages of French projects; key French words and numbers are pinned to the walls. After register the children repeat and act out fun rhymes in French before launching into song – all in French, with movements.

“Now who’s having hot dinners today,” asks Jean. Nine hands shoot up.

“That’s neuf,” one pupil points out with a cheeky wink.

For anyone who recalls French lessons being more like conjugating verbs in Guantanamo Bay, this happy classroom scene is a blessed relief.

Jean’s work is clearly paying off. Not only are her pupils talking in tongue but she was recently nominated for the Primary Language Teacher Award 2008. It was an accolade she narrowly missed out on, but her efforts still scored ‘dix points’ for raising the profile of second languages in primary schools.

Levez la main . . . everybody knows the answers in Jean Bews’s classes!

As a result of her nomination Jean has featured in the national press and on national radio, and has been asked to write a book, entitled Chez Maison, to help other teachers teach French.

Jean is a lead teacher of French within Shropshire, and as a sort of foreign languages game of pass-it-on she gives support to other schools which are themselves starting to offer French.

“Schools working together, sharing ideas and resources, is the way forward,” says Jean. “A modern foreign language will be a requirement in primary schools by 2010, and it can be daunting for teachers at first, but Shropshire schools are being given excellent support by the local authority, and I am pleased to be a part of this.

“There is a buzz now in primaries and a growing enthusiasm nationwide for languages in primary schools, especially from the pupils, who develop their cultural awareness as well as their language skills in fun ways in fast-paced activities.”

She is also soon to travel to Lyons with a group of teachers from Shropshire for what is called Language Immersion Week, “where we will be talking totally in French to improve our pronunciation.”

The teaching of foreign languages has certainly come on since Jean was learning French in secondary school in the 1970s.

“I can still conjugate all the verbs,” she says. “There were a lot of lessons learning the verbs, which I liked because I’m female.

“When I started at 11 at secondary school, often girls liked languages better than boys and would do better, but by starting them off younger and teaching it in different ways with lots of movement, actions and songs boys like it as much as girls.”

Some of Jean’s favourite places are Paris (for “atmosphere, the Louvre, shops, people, place names”) and Cassis near Marseilles (for “pine trees, crickets, hot rocks”) and she tries to share her passion and awaken pupils’ academic learnings with practical applications.

Indeed with the help of the Bridgnorth Twinning Association, Jean has secured links with a school in France where letters and pictures have been exchanged.

She has also arranged pen pals between pupils at St Leonard’s and children in other local schools where she has been working as lead teacher. This has generated great enthusiasm among pupils, as they are keen to read and write in French. Also through the Twinning Association the school has hosted French students for the last two years, who have been attached to Jean’s class for two weeks and taken part in all activities.

“Many children write on their reports that French is a favourite subject,” adds Jean – and they are quick to affirm their enthusiasm.

Pupil Nicholas Bowers, 8, says: “We’ve been doing French since we came to the ‘big school’. Mrs Bews teaches all the French stuff and we do it nearly all the time. I’ve been to France and knowing the language helps.”

Fun

Classmate Isobel O’Dowd, 7, says: “She makes it really fun because she makes French games and we sing songs. For European Languages Day recently she made it fun because we painted pieces of food and we had to say what our thoughts were.

“I painted a croissant and wrote ‘J’adore le croissant’.”

And Grace Connolly, also 5, adds: “I’ve got a pen pal in France and Mrs Bews’ French is really going to help me.”

As I leave, some of the children treat me to a performance of a song they’ve learned called J’Aime la Galette, a nifty ditty about a French biscuit-cum-pancake.

They are full of fun and smiles – a fair indication of how much these children enjoy using their new language – and having just finished a lesson on masculine and feminine versions of the French words for ‘the’ – le and la – Isobel now laughs afresh at the song title.

“J’Aime la Galette,” she says. “That means the biscuit’s a girl.”