Langley Moor Primary School: Introducing Russia

On 9 July 2018, Dr Polina Kliuchnikova visited Langley Moor Primary School as part of the school’s International Week themed around the World Cup 2018. Dr Kliuchnikova ran short presentations in all classes – starting with 20-25 minutes sessions in Reception and Y1 to 30 minutes sessions in Y2, Y3 and Y4 to 45 minutes workshops with Y5 and Y6 pupils. With an average number of children in each class was 29, with over 200 pupils taking part in total. Y3-Y6 students were also asked to provide their feedback on the event either by drawing/writing about their most favorite parts of the session (Y3-Y4) or by answering a short questionnaire (Y5-Y6).

The sessions were run similarly to those delivered to primary school children of County Durham in 2017: the opening was designed to reveal and expand children’s background knowledge of Russia, its geography, climate, language, and culture. This time the presentations also showcased one of the Russia’s World Cup hosting sites, Samara, lesser known internationally compared to the two megalopolises of Moscow and St Petersburg, but providing a relevant example of a ‘typical Russian city’. Another aim of these sessions was to offer opportunities for young audiences to make meaningful associations with the lives and interests of their peers in another country and therefore extend their scope of cross-cultural awareness.

Starting with basic facts about Russia which the children were already familiar with (e.g. the country's capital, its size, its climate, its language, and its role as the 2018 Football World Cup host), children were introduced to the concept of time zones within a single country and made their predictions about travelling times within Russia. Drawing on their interest in the England team’s performance in the championship, we tracked their route across different cities hosting the World Cup and briefly discussed the climate in these places (most of the children mentioned Russia's cold winters, but few had heard about its very hot summers).

The introduction to the Russian language varied across age groups – it included a brief encounter with the Cyrillic alphabet and some elementary vocabulary in the younger clases, and more elaborate exercises aimed at developing cross-linguistic awareness in Y5 and Y6. Basic communicative skills were also introduced to all classes – the children learned how to greet others, introduce themselves, say ‘goodbye’ and ‘thank you’ in Russian, and they practiced this vocabulary among themselves and with their teachers and then were happy to perform some of these words during the day, if meeting the presenter or their friends from other classes during their breaks and lunch time.

In the workshops with the older children (those aged 9-11), a brief introduction to Russian culture and cuisine was provided, though the presentation of a range of characteristically ‘Russian’ objects (Russian dolls, a samovar, a balalaika, and the traditional brick stove whose function children had to guess) as well as a number of traditional Russian dishes (those with parallels to British cuisine or food that the children were more accustomed to).

The last part of the sessions focused on the World Cup in Russia – its official mascot and main cities, the stadiums and teams playing at some of them. With most of the audience supporting the England team many children knew Samara as the city that hosted England's most recent match against Sweden and were very interested to know more about it. Two cultural images that form a strong part of Samara's local identity were presented to all classes – Samara’s leading role as the country's space industry centre and the city's famous chocolate factory, called ‘Rossiia’, or ‘Russia’ in Russian, which used to be the largest in the USSR. These two anchor images proved to be both visually recognizable and easily relatable to children’s own interests, while giving more information about the cultural and professional profile of the city. The knowledge and skills introduced at the start of the day were integrated into this final part (e.g. making judgments about Samara’s time zone, climate and proximity to Moscow or deciphering basic words and phrases in Cyrillic, such as the word ‘Rossiia’, or the phase ‘I love Samara’).

The core outcomes of these sessions were:

• to put Russia as a country on the children’s mental map while providing a set of visual clues for its recognition and differentiation (e.g. the alphabet and variety of time zones);
• to give a taste of a foreign language based on a script different from the Latin alphabet and to provide basic skills of ‘decoding’ its graphics and pronunciation as well as simple communicative knowledge;
• to introduce Russian provincial life through the example of Samara, its cultural history and present identity;
• to expand children’s growing cross-cultural awareness and inter-linguistic skills in a focused session delivered by a ‘native’;
• to diversify children’s international outlook and provide possible connections with lives and interests of their peers in another country.