LANGUAGE HUB EXTRA CURRICULAR UPDATES
w/c 15th January 2024
Season of Russian crafts
Students from Year 8 and 9 were very excited to welcome Oksana Sekacheva, founder, organizer and educator of "Season of Russian crafts", a workshop that encourages the interaction of Russian and British cultures.
We learnt about handmade clay toys, sculptures and whistles made by the best artists in the field from different regions of Russia such as Filimonovo (Tula Oblast), Abashevo (Penza Oblast), Hludnevo (Kaluga Oblast), Kargopol (Arkhangelsk Oblast).
The project demonstrates the diversity of this peasant craft, its uniqueness and expressiveness and to understand the Russia of ordinary people through folk arts, colour, shapes and symbols.
We were lucky enough to take part in a masterclass where students had a go at clay modelling themselves and hand painted their own whistle in the authentic Russian style of Filimonovo.
Year 9 student, Eva said "It was a very nice experience to have a Russian lady visit and teach us about origins of different styles of Russian toys. It was very interesting learning about the history of ceramic art and it was fun making toys."
w/c 1st January 2024
Celebrating an incredible win!
Huge congratulations to our Lower Sixth student, Sophia, for clinching the prestigious title of the 2023 Russian Translation Competition winner held by the University of Sheffield!
She has been awarded an Amazon gift voucher and an invitation to a Translation Workshop organised for Sophia and the other competition winners.
Mrs Gee and Mrs Latimer, Head of Languages, met with Sophia to discuss this fantastic achievement.
w/c 11th December 2023
German - Career Pathways
Following on from the success of our recent German Translation and Creative Writing Workshop, we were delighted to host a talk by Charles Wilson from the German National Tourist Board, as part of the Goethe Institut’s Business Lunch series; Discover Your Career with German.
German language students from Year 9 and Sixth Form were invited to hear Charles extol the virtues of having a second language and how German had allowed him to have such an interesting and varied career; starting in the British Corp of Signals based in Germany, moving through into many areas within the travel and tourism industry.
Our students had worked in their German lessons on career-related vocabulary and considered the world of work in preparation for the talk, which culminated in Charles taking questions from our students both in English and German.
w/c 27th November 2023
German Translation and Creative Writing workshop
A group of year 10 German students took part in a German Translation and Creative Writing workshop recently, courtesy of our partners the Goethe Institut and the Stephen Spender Trust.
The workshop was led by Sophie Lau who speaks 8 languages herself and she also spoke to the students about the benefits of languages in her varied career as a translator, journalist and even as a model.
With Sophie's guidance, the students translated the poem "One Day" by Julia Engelmann, before demonstrating excellent creative writing skills with poems, cartoon strips, stories and a rap all produced by the end of the workshop.
Sophie was impressed with our students and their work, with the rap combining German and English (for reasons of poetic license) a highlight!
W/C 11 March 2024
International Space Languages Challenge
Two teams were entered into an Inter-school competition with Business Language Champions, where students needed to combine Languages with Science as they created a Space Hotel. First, they listened to a key note from someone who currently uses their language skills in the space industry.
Next, students demonstrated excellent team work skills and felt the challenge of transferring their language skills into a scientific field and considered the challenges of low earth orbit. They needed to design an innovative Space hotel, they presented their hotel design to investors and were quizzed in the target language. They then created some very entertaining TV adverts to promote their Space hotels! It was great to see the students' enthusiasm and creativity being used so collaboratively and how they rose to the challenge.
W/C 4 April 2024
Languages Marketing Workshop
Year 9 students worked creatively on a languages marketing workshop. The group firstly considered the 4 Ps of marketing, product, price, promotion and place as well as the additional considerations needed to market abroad. Secondly, they explored the concept of transcreation of slogans that companies use to market their products globally or why in the case of Audi, choose to keep their slogan in German. The students' main task was to market Jelly Babies, drawing on their history as post-war peace babies which were created to celebrate all colours and creeds. Our students' flyers were praised for their link to the history of this well-known sweet and their use of their languages stills to trans create their slogans, use alliteration and rhyming.