European Week at RGSW

This week saw the return of our annual European Week. Pupils of all ages were able to take part in different activities that sought to promote a greater appreciation of European languages and culture.

In addition to the work undertaken in MFL classes, other subjects also tailored lessons to include a European theme.

In Maths, pupils looked at number systems in different languages. In PE, pupils counted in different languages during their warm-up stretches. In IT and Computing, there was the opportunity to research different computer code languages and look at famous European computer scientists. There were also European themed quizzes for Tutor time to put European general knowledge to the test!

In the Dining Hall, there were French, Spanish and German themed menus that were on offer throughout the week. The chicken and chorizo paella on Wednesday seemed to go down particularly well with all those who tried it!

Thanks to Miss Gidon, there was also the opportunity to try handball and pétanque at lunchtime, as well as an introductory session to Dutch being organised by Dr James. On Thursday, Mr Jackson gave a Billingham Society talk on the evolution of language. The talk discussed the origins and history of language codification, as well as challenging modern preconceptions of grammatical correctness. The session was well-attended and there were some thoughtful questions and lively debate that followed the main talk.

We hope that pupils enjoyed the activities that were on offer this week and we would like to thank all staff and pupils for the support that we received. We hope that the enthusiasm for European languages and culture continues and we are already planning more events to take place during the rest of the year.

Mr Luke Jackson, Head of MFL