St Joseph's Academy

This year at Saint Joseph's Academy, we decided to host our first Primary 7 Transition Day in line with European Day of Languages. We held a joint S1/P7 Mass which saw several pupils offer bidding prayers in their native tongue. Feedback from staff and pupils was that it was truly fascinating and inspirational hearing all the different languages, for example Russian, Spanish and Polish. 

The Primary 7 students then took part in a carousel of Europe and language focused activities in the Modern Languages Department. There was a European Language Treasure Hunt, A Crack-the-Code flag challenge, a 'Europe Drive' where pupils competed to build a map of Europe using the dice and everyone belted out the ‘Hokey Cokey’ in Gaelic. It was an action-packed and fun-filled morning and all P7 students went away knowing a bit more about not only the school and the Modern Languages Department but a mini-booklet that they can finish and share with those at home.

Thanks to the support of the canteen staff, a special European themed menu was served and the dining area was decorated with flags, posters and information about all the different languages spoken in our school. 

All classes and staff were encouraged to get involved by involving languages or Europe within their lessons or perhaps by saying the daily prayer in French or Spanish. Staff also completed a multiple choice quiz based on European Languages. 

The European Day of Languages was the focus in Home Room this week, which saw pupils every day think about, discuss and debate what is preferable - living in a mono-lingual or multi-lingual world. An on-line survey that classes completed shows that the majority of students are very much in favour of languages and decided that it would be boring if we all spoke one language and that it is important to our cultural identity.