European Languages Day - what does your school do?

[roisin]

Does anyone have any creative suggestions and/or ideas which have worked at their school or their children's school.

Ta,
Rx

[Blandmum]

We have to say hello in a MFL (all subjects)

More if we are capable!

We are also asked to lie MFL into the lesson somehow, so I gor Ampere into my lesson on electricity....him being French and all!

Not very inspiring

[Fauve]

When is it, roisin?

[Blandmum]

Kids also have stick on badges that say hello in a variety of languages. But the MFL department organise that side of things

[roisin]

It's the 26th September.
It has been suggested that I sit down with a group of G&T yr9s and between us come up with some proposals for the day

Then I/we/they implement them!

[Fauve]

Personally I would do something food related - bring in different nationalities' food. But then I'm obsessed...

[roisin]

Food sounds good. I could go and liaise with the refectory staff and ask if we could produce the menus, labels and so on for the day in French and German, and add ELD logos. That would be relatively painless, wouldn't it?

I was wondering about some sort of quiz or activity to do in registration groups also. Any ideas?

[Fauve]

Rather routine, but dd's class answer the register in French from time to time. You could do it in a more exotic language!

Have you got any parents who are native speakers? We have tons (relatively speaking) - I often think we should make more use of them. They could come in and talk about their towns, or read out kids' picture books in French, German, Spanish, etc.

Also songs are brilliant for getting languages to stick in the mind, forever.

[Fauve]

You could do a treasure hunt with clues in eg French to find the next clue - simple ones, like 'sur la table'; 'sous la chaise', etc.

[ejt1764]

roisin - try here for quizzes ...

We actually do our languages day in the summer term, and make a real fiesta of it ...

• all staff and kids wear badges with the languages they speak on them (there are over 30 different nationalities at our school, so they're quite varied!)
  
  
• food tasting
  
  
• national dance (samba anybody?
  
  
• some of the kids do taster sessions in their home languages - those are always popular
  
  Have fun! (I'll be on maternity leave for ours this year )

[Nightynight]

teach them how to say hello, goodbye, thank you in every european language?

[roisin]

Thanks all - this is really helpful.
We are a pretty mono-cultural school, so I'm envious of you ejt1764.

I'd love to see the staff wearing badges, but there would be too many who don't speak any second language at all.

I'll see what we can work out anyway: definitely some ideas here to go on.

[samanthar]

i had to take the non a level french lot for a half an hour and teach them some expresions mostly french and any german i cd manage ie hardly any that we might or mor elikely might not use on a daily or not so daily basis...carte blanche, raison d'etre, tete a tete (plus accents etc of course) laissez faire (economists managed this one)
pied a terre
got a bit stuck with the german beyond
kindergarten, weltanschauung, zeitgeist,leitmotif (musicians only know this one)
or just broadened out into 'sabot'eurs reconnaissance etc
am guessing you cd sit around and come up with useful ones,
menu vocab if nothing else..but spose this depends whether students need to know what crudités are
actaully once you get going theyve all heard of pret a manger, film pre a porter etc

[samanthar]

have just read that theya re yr 9 so maybe leave out menage a trois as an example!

[samanthar]

joie de vivre, sang froid,

[Anna8888]

Download some French pop music, play it and get the class to translate the words into English.

[Byebyebucket]

Loads of good stuff on the official website ..... I am spoilt for choice ! TES also has brilliant resources. I'm excited !