West Calder High School, West Lothian

Well every year it comes upon as if we don’t know that it’s the 26th of September! So here at West Calder High School, aka last minute.com, we managed to pull off another spectacular celebration of European Day of Languages. 

Some S1/2 pupils were treated to a lovely French breakfast on Monday morning while they enjoyed the great EDL quiz hosted by our ML teachers in fancy dress. Several countries represented in costume by the ML staff and our fantastic colleagues in the Humanities & Languages Collaborative. One English teacher even managed to dress in a Basque costume, testing us out to see if we knew it was the oldest language in Europe. Eh...of course we did!

We managed at the last minute to dig out our photo booth materials from a previous year and enjoyed the fact that we could celebrate in such a way again. I think perhaps the ML staff enjoyed the photo booth a bit too much! 

For the rest of the week we have continued to learn facts about languages and have completed the quiz with great enthusiasm - the Disney songs in different languages was a particular highlight for Mrs McLean who seemed to think she had to sing along...no?!

All in all it’s been a great opportunity to celebrate languages, to have some ML fun again and to find an excuse to dress up. Bis nächstes Jahr - West Calder High School will be ready for you EDL 2023!

Addiewell Primary School, West Lothian

Our Addiewell Language Ambassadors marked respect for recent events by researching European monarchies. They created PowerPoints with information, vocabulary and sound files for queen, king, prince, princess and crown in the countries’ language. 

We sent this lovely work to our teachers for them to share with their classes and challenged them to learn some of the vocabulary, Primary 3 did a wonderful job learning to say queen in four European languages!

Teachers have been dipping into our West Lothian EDL padlet and we have linked our language learning with Maths Week and carried out calculations using French and Spanish vocabulary! 😊

St Columba's High School, Inverclyde

In St Columba's High School in Gourock we celebrated EDL across the whole school with French prayers at mass and during registration. Canteen staff wished pupils a ‘bon appétit’ at lunch time. Staff taught lessons with language links such as ‘The Tower of Babel’ in Tech, Spanish artists in Art and French numbers in Maths. 

We hosted a ‘fun day’ in the ML Department for all BGE students and Senior Phase linguists. Pupils were greeted by S6 Language Leaders and took part in a variety of activities: design an EDL t-shirt, passport quiz, flag face paint and tattoos, blind food tasting, flag challenge, Spanish Just Dance, BSL, French karaoke and more! Staff were treated to a ‘Pop Up Patisserie’ at lunch time. 

Feedback from pupils says that they would like more food tasting and French/Spanish Just Dance throughout the year. Language Leaders suggested organising monthly ‘Pop Up Patisseries’ for staff. Overall, a fun-filled, language-linked, culture-crazy day was enjoyed by all!

Calderglen High School, South Lanarkshire

This year was the first in many that we really feel like we could have a normal EDL celebration. 

S1 were designing the new Twitter banner and logo, to be created in Graphics with Adobe Suite. 

S2 were working hard on the EDL T Shirt Contest - we hope one of our pupils will be the lucky winner!

S3 went on a QR code treasure hunt around the school!