Saint Luke's High School, East Renfrewshire

Saint Luke's HS celebrated EDL with a workshop carousel this year. Pupils used their curiosity and sense-making skills to classify different Instagram food posts into the country of origin. They also learned new words while deciphering ‘Harry Potter’ in Latin and ‘Old MacDonald had a Farm’ in Gaelic. 

They had the opportunity to explore around the school while going on a sentence hunt. All of them said they learned at least two sentences in another language and it was so much fun! 

Last but not least was our Masked Linguist competition where all pupils and staff were invited to participate, guess the teacher and guess the language. This was definitely a highlight for many!

St George's School, Independent (Edinburgh)

In Junior, Lower and Upper School Library, we featured displays of books in languages other than English. 

And in Junior School, Ms Carey is reading a book in Spanish to classes and encouraging them to explore the books in other languages in Junior School Library. While students in Upper School completed a quiz guessing which teachers was speaking which language.

Inveralmond Community High School, West Lothian

We celebrated European Day of Languages in style by celebrating world languages all week with various events happening both in classes and around the school. 

We had a Bake Off competition in the dinner hall at lunchtime when our Head Teacher took on 3 other members of staff to decorate the cake in the country they selected from a hat. The pupils voted by the loudest cheer for their favourite cake. We also held a pupil Bake Off for the first time this year and had some amazing entries brought into school to be judged by our Language Ambassadors. 

Our Language Ambassadors also ran a 'Decorate Your Door Competition' for staff and the pupil photo booth at lunchtimes, where we encouraged pupils to share their photos on social media to promote EDL and language learning. In classes, pupils enjoyed looking at links between languages, learning a new language of their choice, creating world bunting for our corridor and helping with our door decoration!

Preston Street Primary School, Edinburgh

European Day of Languages is an annual event which celebrates linguistic diversity and promotes intercultural understanding. At Preston Street, we are proud of the rich cultural and linguistic heritage which exists within our school community, and we were delighted to be able to celebrate this integral aspect of school life on Monday, 26th September. 

In the morning, our P1-4 pupils enjoyed a puppet show based on the book Lapin is Hungry, which is written in both English and French. The show was presented by our Early Years Practitioner Ms Tania Czajka, who co-wrote this wonderful book. We are extremely grateful to Ms Czajka for bringing the story to life in such an exciting way. 

In the afternoon, we welcomed a number of parents and carers to all our classes from P1 to P7 for a special European Day of Languages storytelling session. Our special visitors read stories in a range of languages including Italian, Polish, Hungarian, Spanish, German and French. We are very grateful to everyone who volunteered their time to provide this wonderful experience for our children and young people. 

Special thanks are due to Ms Czajka, Mr Maclean, Mrs McNeill and Mr. Anderson for organising the above events, and thank you also to all the parents and carers who came to read stories. We are always proud of the amazing community feeling which comes to the fore on days such as these!

The Robert Burns Academy, East Ayrshire

At The Robert Burns Academy, Senior Language Ambassadors worked with the Modern Languages Department to organise a week of languages activities. 

We organised a Bake Off for European-themed cakes, which had a terrific response and resulted in a bake sale to raise funds. 

Lunchtime activities included the ever popular photo booth, a treasure hunt, quizzes and Polish lessons with an S4 pupil. There were daily language activities for all registration classes. We held a Languagenut competition which was won by an S2 pupil with 20,000 points!

St Ninian's High School, East Dunbartonshire

At St Ninian’s High School, Kirkintilloch, pupils and staff enjoyed a fabulous week of celebrations for European Day of Languages. Our Well-Bean Café was re-branded for the occasion with a Spanish theme. Pupils and staff who placed their orders in Spanish received a free Magdalena for their efforts. DHT David Killin and some of our pupils made the most of the opportunity to look the part. 

A French café was also organised at interval which was a huge hit and gave pupils an opportunity to practice their French speaking skills.

Our school prayer was recited in French and Spanish, pupils participated in quizzes and our Guess the Teacher and the language competition was a great success. The games continued with S2s and S3s getting the opportunity to play pétanque, pass the sombrero, demonstrate their skills at Limbo and design a t-shirt with a European Day of Languages theme. Some of our S3s also made a delicious Black Forest Gateau by following a recipe in German.  

The highlight of our activities was our special guest, Akihito Ido, from Celtic FC, who spoke to pupils about how his language and interpreting skills have led to a fabulous career in football. It certainly was a spectacular week of EDL celebrations for all at St Ninian’s. 

Craigmount High School, Edinburgh

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.