LE/Year 9 Spanish Trip to Europa Centre

On June 5^th, thirty Spanish LE/Year 9 students were invited to go to Europa Centre in the heart of Upminster (London), to enjoy a one-day immersion trip.

Europa Centre is the UK’s only European Learning Village; a school building has been turned into a village called Villa Guisante. Villa Guisante has been designed for role-play so that the students can walk around at their leisure and pretend that they are the shop assistants, the village chemist, the travel agent, etc.

The pupils were split into four smaller groups to visit the mock village where the role-play activities and the games would take place. Our Learning Package included the opportunity to access the learning village, to receive guidance from Spanish language assistants and to take part in a missing person investigation. During the Learning Experience, our pupils completed a number of tasks, all in Spanish! They bought some clothes; broadcasted a radio programme from the local radio station; bought drinks and Spanish cakes at the coffee shop; sold and bought cinema tickets and were interviewed at the airport by one of the language assistants. It was a fun day out for the Spanish department that culminated with an investigation of a robbery at the fruit shop – a live version of the game Guess Who, but on a large scale.