Crosshill Primary School

On Thursday 26th September 2019 Crosshill Primary School participated in the European Day of Languages.

Class 1 learned about Germany. They tasted some German foods including cold meat, smoked cheese, pickled vegetables and special chocolate biscuits. Two visitors who could speak German and had visited the country shared their knowledge and experiences with the children.

Class 2 learned about Italy. Children identified important information about the country including where it is located in the world, the weather and interesting facts. They explored Roman Numerals and could identify numbers up to 12. The children completed a problem solving activity where they had to crack the Roman Numerals code and create their own codes for a partner to solve.

The children also created a mosaic pattern inspired by the Romans.

Here are some quotes from the children:

• “I liked learning how to speak and write in German” - Elana
• “I liked trying the smoked cheese, the pickled pickles and the sparkling water” - Hope
• “I enjoyed learning about the Leaning Tower of Pisa” - Charlie

St Joseph's RC School

To mark European Day of Languages at St Joseph's RC School, we gave it an 'International' approach to include everyone in our multicultural school community.

We had a survey carried out to find out how many languages are spoken by our pupils and their families. We did this the week before European Day of Languages and we found out there are 46 languages spoken in our school community! We are going to use this information to make up a display in the shape of a tree and the leaves will be filled with the word 'Hello' in all those languages. We can't wait to see it finished.

On the Thursday 26th, pupils and staff wore a sticky label on saying 'I can speak...' and had to write the language/s they could speak. Then they could have fun by learning how to greet someone else in their language, or find out if there was anyone else around the school or playground who spoke the same language. It was great fun and there were lots of conversations going on among pupils and staff about languages.

Also, we had some parents coming into their children's classes to share in a bit about their language and or culture with the class.

It was a great experience for everyone and we had very positive feedback from everybody.

Inveralmond Community High School

As part of our EDL celebrations at Inveralmond Community High School we had various events on throughout the week.

We held a very popular "Ice off" in the dining hall where 4 staff members including our head teacher took part. They had ten minutes to ice a cake dependant on the country they chose at random from a bag of props!!

We also allowed pupils to learn a language of choice for a period and they created some European bunting for our corridors.

Due to popular demand we also had our EDL photo booth again for pupils to use during lunchtimes to choose props and take selfies/photos.

Finally we had staff throughout the school get involved by greeting pupils in a different language each day of the week and we recorded a short video of some of our staff and pupils who's first language is not English. Pupils enjoyed this so much. 

It was a fantastic week and really promoted Languages whole school.

Prestwick Academy

Celebrations of language and culture was in full swing last week at Prestwick Academy, as we celebrated European Day of Languages.

In Modern Languages, pupils participated in 25min lesson rotations and enjoyed tasters of Italian, German, Russian, various quizzes and songs in different languages. Pupils had an opportunity to take selfies in our ML photo booth using international props. S1 pupils also debated on the importance of languages in their future and gained opinions of parents and carers at home, making their opinions into colourful and insightful posters. S2 pupils created flags in unusual ways, the home baking was well received by staff and the art entries were very creative! Prestwick Academy staff offered fun facts about their connections to other languages and cultures, these facts were made into a quiz for S3 pupils.

 
European Day of Languages was celebrated across the whole school, all staff enjoyed a French breakfast in the staff room at break time and there was a fact filled staff quiz, the winners of which were the Geography department. At lunch, our fabulous canteen served specialities from different countries and our Modern Languages and International Captains played their choice of foreign playlists in the main foyer for all to enjoy.

Inspirational quotes about language learning were shared in Personal Support time and Prestwick Academy launched our new ERASMUS+ project to pupils – Entrepreneurial Entertainers.

All teachers spoke in a foreign language in their classrooms (some with the help of scripts in different languages). Afterwards pupils across the school identified the teacher who made the most effort during EDL; Mr Laing in the Art department was awarded the prize for his impressive use of Polish in the classroom.

In the evening, our senior phase Spanish pupils and modern language teachers enjoyed an evening of authentic Spanish dishes at Tinto Tapas in Troon and afterwards watched a Spanish documentary together at Ayr Town Hall (tickets gifted by Ayr Film Society).

Pupils and staff of Prestwick Academy loved celebrating different cultures and languages during European Day of Languages on 26th September and are already planning more exciting events for next year!

St Margaret's RC Primary School

We at St. Margaret’s decided to introduce a Languages Week into our yearly calendar, to educate both the children and teachers on the benefits of learning languages and to eradicate some of the fears associated with it.

Many teachers are reluctant to embrace new languages within the classroom because they are worried about their own subject knowledge and this is understandable. To alleviate these fears, we created an ethos where we would endeavour to learn languages together, with the teachers and pupils acquiring knowledge as we moved along.

Each class within the school chose a language that enthused the pupils and we planned to link languages with the Geography and culture of a specified country. The results were fantastic and the parental input was a great help. We have so many bilingual parents that it would be foolish not to use this resource which is on our doorstep. Parents helped us by teaching both Hungarian and Lithuanian to the children and all the evidence can be found in our special vlog, created specifically for languages week.

Exploring the cultural aspects of our chosen countries allowed us to sample the music, food, art and traditions of places many of the children had never heard of. This fully immersed the children in the project and the languages were an integral part of our learning. The results are a great example of Curriculum for Excellence in full flow as we have managed to cover a huge amount of Experiences and Outcomes from a variety of subjects.

View the special vlog created for our Languages Week. 

Vale of Leven Academy

Vale of Leven Academy’s newly appointed Senior Languages Ambassadors planned and organised this year's European Day of Languages event.

Activities included a 'Joke Box Competition' to find the best languages-related joke, a European photo booth with green screen backgrounds and props, an international music playlist at lunchtime, themed food in the canteen which included croissants, waffles, lasagne and paella, a 'Name the Bear' competition, a bake sale and flag face painting by pupils from Voila Hair and Beauty.

The winning joke was ‘What did the Frenchman say to the ocean when the tide came in?’ ‘Mare sea!’.

Just over £150 was raised on the day which will be donated to CHAS.

We are so proud of the fantastic job our senior pupils did in pulling this event together and sharing their enthusiasm for languages with the school!

Dyce Academy

Here at Dyce Academy, we did a Euro quiz with S1 and offered hand and arm tattoos. 

Some of our senior pupils are foreign nationals from Poland, Romania, Mexico and the Philippines and they introduced themselves and spoke about their hobbies in their own language. 

We also made a film of pupils and staff who speak other languages and had them introduce themselves and talk about their hobbies. Each person gave the same information so pupils could guess what they were saying.

One S2 class swapped Spanish to learn Italian for a day and another did aerobics in class with instructions given in French. 

We had quite a bit of fun!

Largs Academy

At Largs Academy we did a full celebratory day for our new S1 pupils who had the opportunity to take part in lots of activities to celebrate European Day of Languages.

They were able to sample a little bit of Portuguese with Mr. McFadyen and partake in some language learning quizzes!

Mrs Tait from our Religious Education department invited some pupils who had recently been to Malawi to share stories from their trip, and they gave pupils some insight into colonisation. This gave our pupils a greater appreciation of the great work that Mrs Tait and her Charity Committee do for our Partnership School in Malawi.

Pupils were able to put their team building and engineering skills to the test with Miss Kerr's Eiffel Tower Building Challenge. This activity brought out the competitive side of our pupils with some great attempts to re-create the Eiffel Tower using only newspapers and tape.

Pupils tested their Disney knowledge with a song competition working out songs in different languages from around Europe - they said they loved this class led by Miss Drion!

Other pupils worked with two fantastically talented senior pupils learning about and singing Italian opera and identifying different words in different languages.

Finally with Miss Gall the S1 pupils used acrylic paints to decorate 'language stones' with the theme of Europe. Some fantastic designs were created and while some pupils took their stones home, others will be strategically hidden round Largs and any pupil who finds a language stone has to send a photo of themselves with the stone and tag 'languagestones' on Facebook as well as upload to Twitter and they will find themselves the winner of a prize! 

Many other teachers in the school joined in and shared their language knowledge and stories with our pupils. A great day was had by all!

Aberdeen City Council

Aberdeen City Council schools were invited to join in a morning of activities for P7 and S1 pupils at Lochside Academy on Friday 27th September to celebrate EDL. The event was run with the support of Aberdeen University School of Language and Literature student volunteers, German Educational Trainees and a FLA.

The morning started with a series of games in French, German, Spanish and Gaelic. Primary and secondary pupils joined in teams and practised vocabulary in languages often new to them in a fun and interactive way. After a break, they took part in a quiz with questions about languages, travel and culture.

The feedback from teachers and pupils was very positive. The participation of the language students made the event more relevant and motivating for the pupils. Opening the event to P7 and S1 pupils was an opportunity to build relationships between primary and secondary Modern Languages colleagues.

The pupils were all issued with a certificate at the end of the event.

Dunbar Primary School

At Dunbar Primary School we held a 'Bring your language learning to assembly' on European Day of Languages. 

Gill Eunson, Depute Head shared the importance of language learning and some related facts.

P4 showed a French weather stations game, P6 taught us all a French alphabet song and P7s a Ma Famille song.

The P1s sang their morning Bonjour song. A couple of P7 classes did a Europe quiz. 

Grange Academy

S2 pupils in Grange Academy recently celebrated the European Day of Languages by taking part in various workshops organised by the Modern Languages Department and our Senior Language Ambassadors. Pupils worked in groups through a series of challenges as they reflected upon the importance of language learning in the modern world.

They were challenged to build free standing models of the Eiffel Tower using only tape and paper. They had to learn to count from 1-10 in Mandarin whilst doing Kung Fu.

Pupils were also tested on their knowledge of Europe in a QR code quiz and were asked to identify different flags.

One of the most popular activities was the photo booth workshop where everyone enjoyed dressing up and posing with props – including staff!

At the end of the event pupils had to write down what they saw as the benefits of language learning and their insightful comments were most impressive.

Feedback was hugely positive and in the words of one S2 pupil “European day of Languages was a great day. We all had fun and it was a good laugh.” We can’t ask for more than that, can we?