This week we celebrated European Day of Languages! At Seniors, Mrs Blizzard led the whole school assembly in the morning to explain the reasons behind the day of celebration. The main aim is to raise awareness amongst the general public of the importance of language learning and protecting the linguistic heritage.
Senior students and members of the INSPIRED Sixth Form Hannah, Scarlett, Imogen and Rebecca also stood up and spoke to their fellow students about the benefits of learning a new language, and a brief history of the origins of many modern day languages and where words stem from. English is an especially multicultural language, having influences from many different countries over the course of time. Many of these are Old Germanic languages such as Old German, Norse and Dutch from Anglo-Saxon and Vikings invaders who settled in England and imprinted their culture and values into what is now modern day Great Britain.
Latin, French, Italian and Spanish also heavily influence the English language, with around 28% of English words having their origin in Latin. This is largely thanks to over 350 years of Roman occupation and the Roman Catholic church, as well as legal and medical terminology.
As part of the celebration, there was also a fantastic lunch put on for everyone by our catering partners Thomas Franks. What a feast it was!
The menu covered a whole host of European countries from Italian Minestrone Soup to start, Greek Chicken Gyros, Swedish Meatballs with Pepercorn Sauce, Spanish Prawn and Chorizo Paella as mains, French Croque Monsieur as a delicious Sandwich of the Day, Turkish flatbread and Mediterranean Vegetarian Medleys as sides and an old classic the English Trifle as a dessert.
It really was a fantastic way to break up the day, and the cafeteria was laid out with flags and balloons to celebrate as students enjoyed the options that were available to them. The salad bar was also laid out beautifully with extras such as pesto pasta, tomato and mozzarella salad, and tzatziki.
Thank you to all members of the kitchen staff for preparing such a flavoursome and diverse array of food.
On Wednesday, Senior students in Year 11 visited Prep to teach them some foreign language skills!
These involved learning the sounds that animals make, and repeating them first in English and then in a foreign language.
The animals ranged from cats, to dogs and frogs and the Prep students repeated the words that the Year 11 students showed them on screen and pronounced to them.
Prep students repeated the words confidently together and their pronunciation was fantastic! It was great to see everyone having fun learning new language skills and working together to do so.
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