We took four of our keen linguists to Portsmouth High School’s Festival of Languages: Josie, Emily (Year 5), Amalisse and Daisy (Year 6).
The morning started with a quiz which proved rather tricky: we were not sure how many living languages are estimated in the world, nor what is considered to be the first form of written language. Fortunately the answers we knew gave us letters which made the name of a European country so we were able to work out the answers we didn't know straight away.
The girls then went on a treasure hunt around the school. All the clues were in Spanish and yet not speaking Spanish did not seem to be a problem. They came back with all the flags (but one) they had to find.
After a drink and a big chocolate cookie, they enjoyed a carousel of taster language lessons with some bilingual pupils of PHS: they counted up to 10 in Japanese and Hindi, learned colours in Russian, family members in Arabic, discovered a bit of Bangladeshi history and tried some typical Polish food. It was amazing to see how quickly they could recognise letters in Arabic words and they are still greeting one another with “Namaste” with their hands together and a little bow.
The whole morning fitted so well with our International Week and the challenges opened our eyes to the diversity of languages, sounds and alphabets, all in a fun way.
You might wish to read more about our French curriculum.
