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Celebrating the European Day of Languages

Kirsten Stroud reports on EDL celebrations at Westbrook Old Hall Primary School in Warrington

For the past three years at Old Hall Primary School I have taken the opportunity of incorporating the European Day of Languages into a whole school Language Week celebration.

The first time we celebrated languages in this way it was also my first year of introducing French into the curriculum, so we concentrated on looking at the different languages that were spoken within our school and how words from different languages have made it into the English language.

The second year the children became 'language detectives' - I gave each year group a lesser known country and they had to find out what language was spoken there and some of the words. I also gave them an activity per year group, such as building the Eiffel Tower with matchsticks, reproducing a famous piece of art work and making posters. This year the theme was language and culture. I gave each year group a European country. Unlike the past years, this time I just gave the teachers general directives and then it was up to them what they chose to do with their classes. As with each year we ended the week with a language assembly where the children  were able to show and share their hard work. This year it was really exciting for me as I didn’t know what they were going to present! Flags, pizzas and collages of French food had been made, Spanish food had been tasted and the Year 2 children had even learnt some Norwegian! It was definitely our best language celebration yet.

What has made it even more worthwhile is that everyone has really taken it on board and wants to carry on the work they started. So this year our Harvest celebration is going to be ‘Feed the World’ based around the countries they looked at and the next edition of our school magazine is going to carry the theme on as well.

The European Day of Languages is an extremely good way of promoting languages and everybody, staff and children alike, really enjoy themselves.

Kirsten Stroud, MFL coordinator
Westbrook Old Hall Primary School, Warrington

Further resources, ideas and reports about EDL can be found on the CILT website and the Primary Languages website