It has been a busy week at Blue Coat this week celebrating Languages Week which coincides with the European Day of Languages on the 26th September. Children across the school have been trying out different languages in their lessons through registrations, class activities, and dual language books, and we were even treated to some Chichewa (language of Malawi) from Miss Ward during our assembly on Wednesday. It has been a wonderful chance to celebrate the linguistic diversity of our school and it has been so nice to see children greeting each other in different languages as they come into the houses in the morning, and even teaching the staff and others words from their mother tongue.
The language playground quiz kicked off on Monday and pupils have taken part enthusiastically to find out how to say ‘hello’ in ten different languages, with winners to this competition to be announced in assembly shortly. The whole school was treated to a French themed lunch on Wednesday of chicken chausseur, potato dauphinoise, and crèpes au chocolat – a highlight of the week for some, and many thanks to the catering team for wholeheartedly getting involved complete with flags, berets and fake moustaches!
Later in the week, on Thursday, a group of Year 5 pupils took part in a Languages morning at Solihull School which is organised annually for local primary schools. Each school had a different language to work on throughout the morning, to culminate in a presentation to parents and to each other, and our language this year was Gujarati. The children had great fun learning some basic introductory statements and putting on a fun and dramatic skit, which showed some promising acting skills!
We were treated to two French storytelling workshops this week – one for Year 4, and one for Years 1 and 2. Fairytales are a wonderful way to introduce children to another language as they are so familiar with the plot they can follow what’s happening, and the characters and language are repeated so often throughout that they pick up the words easily. These were both great fun, involving lots of games, repetition, songs and laughter.
To end the week we enjoyed Filippos in Year 6 reading The Lord’s Prayer to us in Greek during our Chapel assembly. Year 3 also enjoyed a taster session of four different languages on Friday afternoon, and we discovered some of the hidden linguistic talents of our staff here at BCS. Mr Wood ran a session in Korean, we had Miss Stefanowski doing Russian, Mr Clements doing Portuguese and myself doing Italian. Well done to all Year 3s for taking part with such enthusiasm!
We are looking forward to our BCS Lecture this evening on ‘Why Study Languages’ which will be delivered by Dr Edward Boothroyd (Teaching Fellow in French Studies at the University of Birmingham), and we hope to see many of you there.
All in all it has been a rich, diverse, and rewarding week and many thanks to all the staff and children for their enthusiasm.
Mrs Newman
Thank you, Mrs Newman, for organising such a wonderful week!
