We embraced European Languages Day at Craigmount High School as a week of World Language and Cultural celebrations. There are many cultures and languages in our school, and we wanted to highlight the diversity which exists alongside our usual curricular offering.
We recruited 12 senior Language and Culture Ambassadors who formed their own working group and are going to recruit and support more Ambassadors from S1 to S4. They also recorded a quiz featuring teachers speaking different languages for tutor groups and judged a competition we organised to include a choice of activities, languages, and cultures. We received some amazing recordings, recipes, presentations, posters and t-shirt and mug designs. We had everything from British Sign Language to Arabic, Urdu, Mandarin and Tamil.
Many students explored new languages, trying out new sounds and writing systems for the first time. Others used their family knowledge of home and community languages to teach us exciting facts and phrases. Our ESOL class speak many languages, as well as learning English. Some of them speak three or four other languages. They used the opportunity to share languages and cultures but also to create their own interviews in English about their lives such as moving and adapting to a new country, family life, friendships, the environment, and social media. They provided lots of different perspectives and some of them enjoyed Moon Cakes, having recently celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Finally, our S1 and S2 Parent Evening visit coincided with our week of celebration, so we were able to find out more about some of their languages and cultures when they visited our faculty in groups. The opportunity to explore, enjoy and experience the vibrancy of so many languages and cultures throughout the week will be something we continue as a regular aspect of school and faculty life.
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