Lessons in Latin for Sheffield primary school pupils bringing language to life

It is not every day you walk into a primary school to be greeted by a group of nine and 10-year-olds saying “Salve” – the Latin greeting meaning “Hello”. But Arbourthorne Community Primary School, which is located in one of the most deprived areas of Sheffield, has been participating in a pioneering new project to use Latin as a way of improving children’s literacy and cultural knowledge.

Sitting in on one of the weekly lessons provides an immediate insight into why.

More than 60 per cent of English words have Latin or Greek roots and at the start of the lesson, the selected group of keen Year 5 and 6 pupils come up with English derivations of the Latin words scribit (‘scribble’, ‘script’, ‘scribe’ and ‘scroll’ are among the suggestions), laborant (‘labour’, ‘laboratory’ and ‘laborious’) and spectat – with ‘spectate’, ‘spectacles’ and even ‘Specsavers’ put forward by the children.

The lesson progresses to learning the Latin names for body parts before the children come up with their own short plays in Latin about a visit to the doctor.

The primary school children have been taking weekly Latin lessons for the past 15 months and for the lesson visited by The Yorkshire Post, are being assisted by pupils from the independent Sheffield High School for Girls, which has come up with the scheme as part of its community outreach work.

Arbourthorne and its sister school Gleadless Primary School, which are members of the South Sheffield East Learning Partnership, have been taking part in the Latin Partnership Programme and there are hopes it could be rolled out to more schools that are in the wider partnership in the near future.

The scheme started around two years ago with a 10-week pilot project led by Head of Classics at Sheffield Girls’ Emma Burne. The pilot saw selected pupils from the two primaries go to Sheffield Girls, where they learnt around 80 Latin words and their English derivatives through teaching them about classical myths and legends, as well as Roman culture and history. Burne says she was unsure about how it would go and some of the children were sceptical at first.