Celebrating European Day of Languages

On Monday 21 September, the Languages Faculty at Cirencester Deer Park School held their annual ‘Languages Week’. During the week, pupils were invited to participate in learning different languages from around the world reflecting Deer Park’s commitment to the International Schools programme.

Sarah Norcott, Key Stage 3 Languages Co-ordinator, organised a series of ‘pupil teacher’ workshops, where pupils from Key Stage 3 prepared a range of activities and taught their peers a new language during their lunchtimes. The languages being taught by our ‘expert’ pupils were; Japanese, Czech, Filipino, Thai, Dutch, Latin, Chinese, Korean, Greek, Romanian, Zulu, Tamil, Latvian, Swahili and Russian.

In addition, to further promote language learning and an awareness of our European partners, as a whole school initiative, pupils from all year groups took part in various language and cultural quizzes within their tutor groups.

"When I’m older, I want to travel the world," said Rosie Nagle, Year 8, "When you go to another country, it shows respect if you learn their language."

Miss Wright, the school’s new Head of Languages commented, "It was evident that the pupils had put a lot of hard work into their presentations, using their ICT skills to a very high level indeed. We are very proud of the contributions the pupils have made to this year’s programme."

Members of staff also took part in the week, with our own English as an Additional Language Specialist, Kathryn Wyatt, teaching Zulu and other teachers wearing badges displaying which languages they spoke.

Sarah Norcott concluded, "It’s amazing how many different languages are spoken by the pupils and staff at our school. Thank you to all those who got involved, It really brought Languages Week alive."

For more information contact Sarah Norcott, Key Stage 3 Languages Co-ordinator

Our ‘pupil teachers’ were:
Adam Michael, Archie White, Mihai Hilohe, Samson Heywood, Ema Lowe, Serena Griffin, Ralf Santos, Shinoj Joni, Andrea Garcia Ochoa Lee, Gandars Pelns, Jenny Craven, Ben Taengnim, Rob Lamble, Alex Butler, Megane Hatton, Alise Fugale, Celline Sharpe.

Some of our Key Stage 3 Linguists!