Welcome to Languages Week Scotland

Pupils at Bo’ness Public celebrated Languages Week 2023 with a timetable packed full of activities and games. All classes took part in a Eurovision themed contest where they had to learn the song ‘Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’ in a different language. P7 pupils conducted a survey of the school to find out what other languages pupils spoke at home to their families. We assigned one of these languages to each class. Everyone performed their song at a whole school assembly and two winning classes were chosen. Pupils also completed a languages themed Bingo grid at home with activities such as cooking, listening to music in another language and daily tongue twisters. Pupils brought in the food they cooked and printed photos of the activities they completed at home. A group of P7 pupils planned and delivered a Polish lesson to all classes. All classes learned about colours and took part in an exciting quiz afterwards. All classes listened to stories in other languages and created art pieces inspired by French Artist Georges Seurat and Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. Older pupils researched some “borrowed words” words we use in the English language and made posters explaining their origin. Younger pupils used iPads to scan QR codes and listen to Disney songs in the native language of the character.

Buckie Community High celebrations were led by the whole language learning community. S3s planned research tasks for younger pupils to carry out, and decorated origami doves. S1s did some work on the word ‘peace’. The school’s S6 Language Leader, Mackenzie, planned and delivered lessons for S3s in Italian and the school’s Confucius teacher, Lilly, organised a Chinese New Year market. The German Educational Trainee presented on the German school system, and senior pupils learnt about life at university, via a Google Meet, with German undergraduates from the University of Aberdeen.

Our school have been proud to celebrate Language Week Scotland. We have taken our registers in a variety of languages each morning, completed a ‘Guess the number of languages across our school’ competition at lunch time along with a song contest on seesaw where children had to sing a song in any language other than English as homework. Classes completed a variety of lessons ranging from language profiles to creating talking flags with voices recordings of the languages. Our current language of the month has been Czech and children and adults alike have greeted each other by saying Ahoj!

To celebrate Languages Week Scotland, Primary 1 shared the languages that they speak at home. The boys and girls shared how to say hello in their native language and challenged everyone to practice with others. We all really enjoyed learning from each other and discovering that we can speak lots of languages in Primary 1! Our Book of the Week was 'Un Livre'. We loved identifying the colours and saying our numbers to 5 in French. We absolutely loved the book and have been practicing the vocabulary through play.

We painted language stones of all the different countries where our children come from including India, Pakistan, turkey and Scotland (and many more!) We have added welcome words in the spoken languages to the stones. These will then be placed in our playground planters to brighten up our playground.

We had a very busy Languages week at Renfrew High. S1 pupils went to our kitchens to make crepes, 80 S2 pupils attended the GFT for a showing of 'La Rafle', S3 pupils competed in a treasure hunt and our S4 Spanish and French learners led activities at our P7 cluster event which included face painting, quizzes, biscuit decorating and food tasting.

P4/3 took part in a variety of activities this week to celebrate Language Week Scotland. We enjoyed learning about French Festival “Poisson D’Avril”. We learned about French artist Paul Cezanne and had a go at recreating some still life art work. We held a French reading cafe where we listened to some traditional French music and enjoyed croissants and brioche while we read. We took part in a Spanish colours and shape scavenger hunt!

In St. Charles’ we had a full week of activities including; a peace poster competition, created Language Stones and invited parents in for a Books, Buns and Bingo Abroad event. For Home Learning we had a language family quiz with hamper prizes.