Our aim is to promote use of the Welsh language in the home as well as at school – between brothers and sisters, parents/grandparents and children/grandchildren. We have a multi-pronged approach:

• Providing Welsh for Adults classes to help parents learn Welsh
   
• Liaising with schools to provide 'taster' courses for parents: these courses aim to teach some basic Welsh words and phrases, introduce some games and activities to try with children, and encourage parents to join one of our Welsh for Adults classes after the taster course
   
• Organising one-off family events in co-operation with organisations such as MYM (Welsh Nursery Movement) and Mentrau Iaith (Welsh Language Initiatives)

For further information, please contact our Welsh for the Family Development Officer Owen Saer: e-mail OSaer@glam.ac.uk, telephone: 07740 760497.

The Key Stages

The Key Stages cover four age groups. During each Key Stage, pupils sit the National Assessment Tests to monitor their progress. There are plans to extend this to include informal assessments of 5 year olds.

This table shows what must be taught and when:

Key Stages 1 and 2	Key Stages 3 and 4
English or Welsh	English or Welsh
Maths	Maths
Science	Science
Design & Technology	Design & Technology
Information Technology	Information Technology
History	History
Geography	Geography
	Modern Foreign Languages
Art	Art
Music	Music
Physical Education	Physical Education

Key Stage 1: A crucial part of the learning process for youngsters…

At the Nursery stage, children from an English-speaking home who start attending Welsh-language nursery school at age 3 will quickly learn to understand the language. They will be able to sing along with songs, follow a range of instructions and possibly name certain actions, kinds of weather, toys, animals, colours and other words which are frequently encountered in the nursery. They will usually not however, be able to speak as fluently in Welsh as in English, will only be able to answer questions with one-word answers, and may need considerable prompting before they will do so.

Children of this age are generally perfectly able to talk about things that can be seen happening around them, but talking about the past and the future is likely to be difficult (in their first language, let alone in their second!). One mother related how she asked her daughter what she had eaten for lunch that day, only to be told in Welsh: 'cinio' ( = lunch!).

At this age, a lot can happen in a year, however. Once the child reaches Reception age, he or she will typically be prepared to give full answers in Welsh, and may initiate conversations. How much children will speak depends not only on their age, but on their personality and many other factors; some take more time than others, of course. If Mummy, Daddy, Gran or Grandad is trying to speak Welsh, the child may well take the role of teacher, once he or she is used to them speaking a different language!