Beaumont school has worked closely with six other partner schools in the Comenius school partnership "Learning to learn". This has given us excellent international professional development on how young children begin to learn. It has increased our interest in developing a strategic partnership to address some of our long-term goals for school development and to make a significant difference, contributing to the improvement plans of all our partner schools. The Erasmus+ proposal “How children learn languages” is a natural extension from our previous work, and provides the chance to focus on a subject which is central to all our schools’ programmes. We plan to look more closely at the learning and teaching of foreign languages with two of our Comenius partners. We have carefully sought and chosen three new partner schools with similar needs for the project, but who have specific recognised best practice in areas different from our own, and are new to international projects. We aim to discover what makes language learning enjoyable and effective for children, resulting in better, more willing and confident communicators in foreign languages. Our objectives are to improve our teaching skills increase our pupils' attainment in communicating in one or more foreign languages provide lasting school improvement The project partners are all primary schools, of different sizes ranging from 75 to 300 pupils. Some of these schools have separate secondary education departments. Some teach more than one language to their youngest children; some teach other curriculum subjects in a foreign language; some use all their class teachers to teach a foreign language. The age range for the project is 3 to 12, and we will include as many as possible of the pupils in each school in project activities. We will also include as many as possible of the teachers in each school in project activities. Our methodology follows a successful format established in our previous project. Six international project meetings will be held to manage the project and move it forwards. Study sessions are inserted into each of these meetings, when the best practice in foreign language learning and teaching in the host partner schools can be observed and then critically discussed and evaluated. After this, and before the next project meeting, each school will undertake structured trials of new ideas, teaching approaches and resources in their own schools, based on what has been observed. The results of these trials will be analysed and the results reported back to the partners at the next project meeting. Baseline assessments will be used to capture the outcomes in terms of increased pupil and teacher performance and confidence. An external educational research expert will assist the partners to develop this into a credible, reliable and productive process. This process is repeated five times during the project. The major results include a set of reports, recommendations and case studies. Video evidence of classroom activities, lesson notes etc. will be published to provide tangible project outputs and high quality teaching resources. We will introduce and encourage the use of ICT in language learning. We will help our pupils to improve their language skills through communicating via letters, emails, live video links and other electronic means with pupils from the other partner schools and by exchanging materials and information. The main impacts for the pupils are that they gain better results, enjoy their foreign language learning and find it more worthwhile; find it easier to understand their peers who are communicating with them in a foreign language; are willing and motivated to communicate in a foreign language; are able to use ICT effectively in communicating with their peers in a foreign language; and above all, see communicating in a foreign language as more relevant to their own needs. For the teachers: have access to and use a high quality set of more effective ideas, methods and resources for teaching foreign languages which have been tried out and are ready to be used in their lessons; are able to teach a foreign language with more confidence that the methodology being used will produce improved results and motivate the children they teach; have more confidence in using ICT in foreign language lessons; have a better understanding and use of informal learning situations and play to achieve linguistic educational objectives; apply improved strategies to provide better learning situations for developing competence and confidence in communicating in a foreign language. Potential long term benefits: Improved strategies for the teaching and learning of foreign languages across all of the partner schools and more widely in their regions A strong network of schools and other partners capable of maintaining the impetus and furthering the project work Willingness of the partners to undertake further international professional development