Young Interpreters
Young Interpreters is a fantastic scheme that supports and develops vhildren's confidence and leadership skills within school. Children receive training from specialists so that they can help newly-arrived pupils feels welcome and help thenm to settle into their new environment. Young interpreters can be speakers of English only, or speakers of other languages. Together, our Young Interpreters use range of inventive ideas that have been modelled during their training to communicate with their new classmates. The Young Interpreters are buddied up with new arrivals to: show them around the school; demonstrate school routines; play games; spend break and lunch times together; and suppot with any other school activities that require everday language. Young Interpreters do not replace professional interpreters, and they are not expected to support with new academic content.
Young Interpreters are chosen by the teachers because they are friendly, kind and welcoming. Young Interpreters are empathetic, smiley, caring, patient, trustworthy, cheerful and good listeners. They understand that the person they are helping may be feeling nervous, scared, confused, embarrassed, excite or alone - everyone is different!
The Young Interpreters Scheme develops the confidence, communication and leadership skills of the Young Interpreters. Mrs Summerell and Mrs Westwood are our school's Young Interpreters Co-ordinators. We acknowledge and celebrate the skills of our children at Sydenham, and adopting the Young Interpreters Scheme is just one way of us showing that we value multilingualism at our school. The Young Interpreters scheme is underpinned by our school ethos as a UNICEF Rights Respecting School (Article 28 Right to education; Article 29 Goals of education; and Article 30 Children from minority or indigenous groups); as well as by the values of Schools of Sanctuary.