European Day of Languages 2023
The languages of Europe rang out across both Junior and Senior schools this week to celebrate European Day of Languages, as pupils held events and activities to highlight Europe’s linguistic and cultural diversity.
Monday began with a very jolly Junior school assembly, where pupils heard a joke from the Minions film in 19 different languages – and laughed heartily each time.
Throughout the week Key Stage 2’s Modern Languages lessons included a themed quiz, with categories comprising Name the flag, Name the celebrity’s nationality, Name the language in a song, and How many languages can you say hello in?. Pupils competed in their Houses for the House Languages trophy, which was bagged by Pegasus for the second year in a row.
Music played its part in the week, with the children enjoying listening to ‘Let it go’ from Disney’s Frozen in 25 different languages and Mulan’s ‘I’ll make a man out of you’ in 30 languages.
Junior school pupils were also set ‘The Great Languages Challenge’ devised by the British Council, where they completed a variety of challenges in a different language and received house points for each one completed.
Meanwhile the Senior School was equally lively, with form time activity for pupils in all year groups across the week including a European Language Diversity presentation and fun – though tricky – quiz created by Year 9 pupils Leila and William.
In Modern Languages lessons pupils taught each other vocabulary in a language of their choice, while the influence of ancient Greek on Maths (the word mathematics itself comes from the Greek máthēma, meaning ‘to learn’) was brought to life as the Greek alphabet was introduced to all pupils.
Tuesday saw pupils and teachers from both Junior and Senior schools enjoy a European heritage lunch menu, with dishes including Lithuanian mushroom soup, Ukrainian dumplings, Greek beef stew, Spanish vegetarian paella and German Black Forest Gateau.
European Day of Languages was launched by the Council of Europe in 2001 and is celebrated every year on 26 September. The campaign is designed to raise awareness of the importance of language learning and the preservation of linguistic heritage, promote intercultural understanding, and encourage lifelong language learning both in and out of school.
